Hundreds of women’s rights activists marched on Tuesday, March, to commemorate International Women’s Day and to slam the series of oil price hikes in the country.

Amid the continued fuel rise, various groups renewed calls to junk the oil deregulation law which is believed to mitigate the rapid increase in fuel price.

Meanwhile, Joms Salvador, secretary-general of GABRIELA, said the suspension of excise tax on oil is seen to give relief to Filipinos.

“Kung aalisin ang excise tax, bababa ng P6 kada litro ang diesel at P10 kada litro ang gasolina. Mababawasan din ng P3 kada litro ang presyo ng LPG ng syang gamit ng mga kababaihan sa pagluluto (If we will scrap the excise tax on oil, diesel price will go down by P6 per liter and fuel price will go down by P10 per liter. The price of LPG, which is used by women for cooking, will also go down by P3 per liter),” Salvador said.

According to the Department of Energy (DOE), the latest increase brought the three-month total of LPG to P11.95 per kilo, noting that LPG prices in March may range between P794 to P1,054 per 11-kilogram cylinder.

“Sa isang pamilya na kumikita lamang ng P500 o mas mababa pa kada araw, malaking tulong na ang pagbawas ng ilang piso lalo na’t habang tumataas ang presyo ng langis at mga bilihin, hindi naman tumataas ang sahod ng manggagawa (For a family that earns only P500 or lower daily, the reduction of few pesos is already a big help, especially as the prices of oil and commodities increase, while workers’s wages don’t),” Savador lamented.

Citing 2018 data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, 58.2 percent of low-income family’s expenses only go to food.

Salvador urged President Rodrigo Duterte to order Congress to review the country’s oil deregulation law.

She also prodded Duterte to order the DOE to investigate and punish the big oil companies “for their possible manipulation” of the country’s oil price.